This application relates to a curtain-sided vehicle such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,709,552. Curtain-sided vehicles combine some of the advantages of a flatbed trailer with those of an enclosed or slab-sided trailer. A flat-bed trailer or truck body offers the advantages of easy cargo accessibility and more efficient loading and unloading. However, to protect a load from weather conditions such as rain and snow, a tarp must be placed over the load and securely tied down. This consumes time and adds to the expense of moving a load. A slab-sided trailer or truck body offers the advantage of weather protection but sacrifices the convenience of side-loading and unloading. Slab-sided vehicles are normally loaded from the rear wherein the front cargo is loaded first and rear cargo is loaded last. Curtain-sided vehicles such as the one described in the '552 patent offer weather protection as well as the convenience of side-loading. In the vehicle disclosed in the '552 patent, a curtain pole is attached to a curtain and then the curtain and pole are secured to the rear of the trailer. The tensioning device at the front of the vehicle is then used to tension the curtain horizontally and a set of vertical straps are secured to the bed of the trailer to provide load security as well as vertical tension. If access to the rear portion of the trailer is necessary, the front tensioning device is released, all the vertical straps are released and the curtain is pulled back at the point where the load is to be accessed. Overall, this procedure is more efficient than the procedure used to load and unload ordinary slab-sided vehicles. However, a considerable amount of time and effort is consumed in accessing a load near the rear of the vehicle since the front tensioning device and vertical straps must be released before the curtain can be released from where it is secured at the rear of the vehicle. Installing a tensioning device at the rear of the trailer, like the one at the front of the trailer, would allow access to the rear portion of the trailer. However this would cause a side-to-side decrease of approximately seven inches in loading width which is unacceptable for some trailer loads.
The manner in which the present invention deals with such problems of the prior art will be understood as this description proceeds.